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Sparkler Season

Friday, 4 November 2016

Bonfire night is upon us; how quickly has this year gone! October felt like it lasted only 5 minutes! In the UK, Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes Night) is a night filled with fireworks, sparklers and bonfires, and is always observed on the 5th of November; 'Remember, remember the 5th of November'.

Bonfire night is one of my favourite times of the year. There are always local firework displays to go to, and they often have live music, food and drink and bonfires. It's such a cozy time of year! I love wrapping up warm in my coat and scarf and pulling on my hat and gloves. I don't think there is anything better than watching the beautiful fireworks go off and to smell the sweet burning of the logs on the fires. And of course all of this should be enjoyed with a hot drink to keep you warm and a candy apple for your tummy.

This year, myself and my sister decided to try and take some pictures with sparklers using the long exposure settings on my camera. I was inspired by my boss (I hate calling her my boss, because she is actually a very good friend of mine!) who is a wedding photographer. I saw one of her photographs from a wedding she shot earlier in the year where she used sparklers to encircle the married couple, and the result was amazing! That's what I tried to recreate in these pictures.

Me and my sister had so much fun making these photo's, and it was really interesting to try different settings and techniques to see how the picture turned out.

I have a Canon 750D and the settings I used were all on the manual mode on the camera. The settings I used were:

Exposure: 6.0 sec at f/5.6

Focal Length: 18mm

ISO: 400

It was good to experiment with the settings and I might try to try spelling words with sparklers soon, as I think that looks really cool! When taking the pictures, you have to make sure that your subject is very still, otherwise they will look blurry (like some of my pictures!). The way we took the pictures is; we got whoever was in the picture to stand very still and made sure that they were in focus. As it was really dark, it was hard to see if they were in focus or not, so to resolve this I got my sister to shine a light on her face so I could zoom in on her face and focus that way, then she took away the light and I lit the sparkler and pressed the shutter button and frantically ran around her, or waved my arm in loops around her.

I am really pleased with how these pictures turned out and I hope to take more like it! I hope this has inspired you all to do something creative and fun this Bonfire Night! I hope your night is filled with sparkle, nice food and crackin' fireworks :)

Let me know if you've taken some awesome sparkler pictures in the comments below!